Black Box 2026

This year’s theme, “Everything We Didn’t Say,” invites artists to explore the complex space of silence that shapes our interpersonal relationships – the space between what is spoken and what remains unspoken, between what we think and feel and what we dare to share with others.

In societies where identities, values, and expectations intertwine between tradition and modernity, between the need to belong and the aspiration for personal freedom, silence often becomes a form of adaptation. Words linger on the edge of being spoken – softened out of consideration, withdrawn out of fear of conflict, silenced due to social norms or internal boundaries we impose on ourselves. In such a context, the unspoken does not disappear – it accumulates, circulates, is inherited, and shapes collective experience.

“Everything We Didn’t Say” opens a space for confronting these invisible layers of reality. Silence is not emptiness, but an active field of meaning – a place where suppressed emotions, unspoken truths, unrecognized injustices remain, as well as unexpressed words of tenderness, support, love, and understanding. Through this open call, Black Box seeks works that articulate what remains between the lines – courageous, vulnerable, and honest artistic expressions that recognize silence as a field of tension, possibility, and transformation.

In an era of hyper communication, in which we are constantly connected, genuine exchange often remains absent. Therefore, this theme calls not only for speaking, but also for careful listening – for attuning to the words that were missing at the right moment and that have left deeper traces than those that were spoken.

Through physical interventions in public spaces, through performance, poetry, as well as video, sound, animation, music, soundscapes, or other digital forms, show that the paradoxical space of silence contains the potential for resistance, for subtle acts of defiance, and for personal truths that are still seeking their form through your work.